I stare at the broken wall, at the hair tie lying innocently in the dirt like a dropped breadcrumb.
My pulse hammers in my ears.
Whoever’s behind this has turned these tunnels into their personal hunting ground.
Hunter bends and picks up the hair tie with a gloved hand. Hepulls out a small plastic bag and tucks it inside. “The house should be just through there,” he says. “Well, right above us.”
We crawl through the jagged hole in the old barrier one by one, flashlights cutting narrow tunnels of light through the dust. Jace and Slade struggle, having to twist their wide shoulders to get through. The air on the other side is worse, thicker and colder, like the house above us is breathing down our necks. It’s weird to think that Strong Manor looms somewhere overhead, burned and forgotten.
Hunter goes first again, map folded away, trusting memory and instinct. I’m right behind him. The passage narrows until we’re moving single file, all of us having to duck. My flashlight beam catches on something metallic ahead, a rusted iron ladder bolted to the wall, leading straight up through a broken grate.
“What’s that?” Slade asks.
Hunter pauses, shining his light upward. “If I’ve got my navigation correct, that is direct access into the basement of the Manor.”
We’re not here to explore the Manor. We’re here to map the tunnels and look for any evidence that could connect back to the missing girls, but the ladder stretches into the unknown. Into a place that may have answers to different secrets.
“I think we should check it out,” Hunter says, confirming my thoughts.
I grab his shoulder, squeeze once. “You and me first. Mateo, Slade and Jace, you stay here. Watch the tunnel behind us. If anything moves, you whistle twice.”
They nod, faces tight. No arguments, like they understand that this area is part of our Baroness and that it is for us, and only us, to discover.
Hunter climbs first. I follow. The ladder groans under our weight, flakes of rust raining down on my face. At the top, Hunter shoulders the grate aside–it screeches like a dying animal–and hauls himself up into darkness. I’m up right after him.
The basement smells sterile, like the ash and water from above haven’t touched it. We land in a low-ceilinged space. Flashlights sweep across cracked walls, exposed rebar, and piles of fallen plaster.
There’s a doorway ahead–simple, no frame, just a rectangular hole punched through solid concrete. Hunter nods toward it. We move together, silently.
The room beyond stops me cold.
It’s not a bedroom. Not really.
Rows of narrow cots line both walls, small, child-sized metal frames rusted at the joints. Thin mattresses, stained dark in places, still sit on most of them. At the foot of each bed is a tiny wooden trunk, the kind you’d see in an old orphanage photo, lids closed, latches corroded shut. No personal touches. No posters. No toys. Just beds and the trunks, surrounded by concrete.
The walls are poured concrete too, thick and windowless, unyielding. Just four solid walls, a low ceiling, and that single steel door on the far end.
Hunter sweeps his light across the cots. “Jesus.”
I step forward, boots crunching on grit. My flashlight lingers on one of the trunks. The wood is swollen from damp, but I can still make out faint initials carved into the lid–small, childish scratches: E. L. Another one: M. R.
They don’t match any of the missing girls, but my stomach still twists.
“Do you think this is the place Arianette remembered under hypnosis?” I ask, voice low.
Hunter turns in a slow circle, beam playing over the ceiling, the corners. “There are no windows with bars. No way for food to come in–no pass-through, no slot. She said she heard other people, but they were farther away–not in the same room. Whatever this is…” he pauses, “... it’s different from what she described.”
“But still pretty shitty,” I mutter.
He doesn’t disagree.
I knew Owen Hexley was a creep; that was obvious with the way he traded Arianette for a taste of royal power, but the general consensus in Forsyth was that his family helped children. But this? This feels wrong. Clinical. Purpose-built. A bad feeling crawls down my spine, cold and familiar.
I walk to the steel door. Heavy. Industrial. No handle on this side–just a smooth plate where a lock should be. I try pushing anyway. Nothing. Try again, shoulder into it. Solid.
“What I want to know,” I say, stepping back, wiping rust from my palms, “well, there are a lot of things I want to fucking know, but first is why there’s an entrance here to the tunnels.”
Hunter comes up beside me, shining his light on the seam where the door meets the wall. “Because this wasn’t just a dormitory, or even punishment. This was transit.”
